Our Interview with Hot Chip

“You could never really do a DJ set like this in real life!”, Hot Chip

Could there actually be better way to celebrate the last Friday in August than by pushing everyone’s desks back against the wall, opening up the drinks fridge and getting Hot Chip in to DJ? No, probably not. So we did. The South West London five-piece came into Spotify promising to fill our office with an eclectic and enlightening mix of music and that is precisely what they delivered.

“It was a pretty extensive playlist!” laughs Chip guitarist (and master of a hundred other things) Al Doyle. “The songs were chosen by all of us and what’s great about doing something like this is it gave us the chance to be really varied and weird in what we choose to play. You could never really do an actual DJ set like this, this selection could never work in real life!”

This was a bit more low-key?
Exactly, we could all stretch out a bit. Owen can throw in some Robert Palmer and Felix can play Wookie – our fundamental influences were all in here. There were new pretenders, like Objekt and Omar S, as well as old school Detroit producers and some heritage acts like Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. It turned out more like a radio show, quite John Peel-esque.

With the release of In Our Heads you’ve reached album number five – that’s a serious landmark.
It is and we had a lot more time to make the record we really wanted this time. Everything was open-ended and there was no release date hanging over our heads. We explored a few dead ends, which is always an enlightening process, it’s great to have the time to experiment and discard what doesn’t work. I’m really proud of the sonics of this record and it has real depth in the song writing.

Ultimately, what five records could Hot Chip not exist without?
Oh wow! Well, Brandy’s What About Us, some classic mid-80’s Robert Wyatt, the Parade LP by Prince and Destiny’s Child’s second album, The Writing’s On The Wall. That would do it.